


stardust to remember you by

by leonshardt



Series: if it ain't broke, respawn it [1]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Amnesia, M/M, Travel, malfunctioning respawn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 12:36:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1941366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonshardt/pseuds/leonshardt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>There is a man lying in the desert. </em>
</p><p>(An error in respawn leaves Sniper alone and bereft, so he ends up on a journey to find himself and what's missing.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	stardust to remember you by

**Author's Note:**

> explanation for how this fic was conceived [on my tumblr](http://leonshardt.tumblr.com/post/91429016035/long-rambling-about-a-tf2-verse-more-so-uh-i)
> 
> i know it's kind of hard to keep track of. this thing was conceived, written, and posted all within 24 hours.
> 
> unbeta'd. so help me.

_i._  

There is a man lying in the desert. 

He wakes up alone, and the first thing he realizes is that there’s something missing.

He pats himself down. He’s wearing unfamiliar clothes and a familiar watch, and when he looks down there’s a patch sewn to his sleeve that reads: _Mann Co._

When he empties out his pockets he finds: one dime, four pennies, a slightly dented bullet, half a pack of matches, and a crumpled receipt.

He smooths out the receipt on his palm, blows off stray lint, and squints at the faded ink. It’s a proof of purchase for cigarettes and wine, dated to May 21, 1971. Below that there’s a name and a scrawled signature, neither of which he recognizes.

Somehow he knows that the name is not his own, although he cannot recall _what_ his name is for the life of him. But the writing on the receipt is familiar, like a half remembered dream, and maybe that’s what was missing. 

He folds the receipt in half, folds it again, and again, and again, and slips it into his pocket where it nestles there like a weighted truth.

(There is somewhere he needs to be.)

 

  

There is a man standing in the desert, and when he digs his boots into the dirt he finds the solid ground comforting beneath his feet.

 

 

There is a man in the desert, walking purposefully, treading a path he doesn’t even know exists yet.

He hits a highway, eventually, and stops. The road stretches very far in either direction, empty of traffic.

He counts in his head, and the numbers in his head are like scripture.

_One, two, three, four…_

He gets to six hundred and fifty-nine before a car finally drives by, leaving a billowing trail of dust behind.

He thinks about the folded square in his pocket, thinks about the name that’s printed there. The name is like an itch in the back of his mind that he can’t get to, and he doesn’t know what any of it means, doesn’t even know what he’s doing out here, so instead he raises his thumb to the sky.

He’s forgotten a lot of things, but he still damn well remembers how to hitchhike.

 

 

_ii._

He stands and waits and waits, and he doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, but he stays there as the seconds, minutes, hours pass. He doesn’t keep track of time; he doesn’t remember how. 

He closes his eyes and sighs, feeling the rays from the sun beating down on his back, tasting the dry dust against the roof of his mouth with every breath.

When he opens his eyes there’s a car rolling to a stop in front of him, a four-door sedan with chipped red paint. He watches as one tinted window rolls down, and there’s a woman’s face behind it, and she’s looking right at him. 

She stares, wide eyed behind rimmed glasses, and he stares back, unmoving.

When the woman finally speaks all she says is _I’m so sorry,_ and there is a pain in her voice that he does not understand.

“What for?” he says, and the words sound very far away.

 _Come inside_ , she says, not answering his question. The car door unlocks as he grasps the handle, and the seat on the passenger side is pleasantly cool. He sits, closes the door, and she drives.

He knows this woman from somewhere, he thinks, and he knows that she is dangerous. There’s a half-inch of knife showing past the hem of her purple skirt, where the sheath is strapped to her thigh, and for some reason it does not alarm him.

The woman asks him if he knows her name, and then furrows her eyebrows when he shakes his head. 

“My name is Miss Pauling,” she says. “God, what happened to you? Don’t you remember me, Sniper?” 

 _Sniper?_ he thinks.

 _Sniper_.

The word settles into the crevices of his mind, and he asks: “Is that my name?”

“Perhaps it is," says Miss Pauling. "It could be. Would you like to find out?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I think I prefer if you just keep calling me that.”

She offers him a small smile, and starts talking. She explains about a gravel war, a feud between brothers, disbanded mercenaries, something broken called Respawn, and he only listens half the time. Sniper doesn’t understand most of the things she says, but he finds the rhythm of her voice soothing, and there is something comforting about the way she addresses him.

 _Redmond Mann is dead,_ she says, and the words mean nothing to Sniper, nothing means anything to him except for the stray thread he is chasing in his clouded head. 

 _You also probably have extensive mental damage,_ Miss Pauling tells him, and Sniper laughs, because _don’t we all?_

She asks him if he has any questions, and if she could do anything to make him feel better. He asks her for today's date.

“It’s the eighth of October, 1971,” she says, giving Sniper a strange look. “We stopped looking for you _months_ ago.”

“Ah,” he says, and does not feel better at all.

 

 

They drive past a rusted water tower, two chain link gates, and several more fences of barbed wire, and they finally roll to a stop in a nearly vacant parking lot.

The only other car here is a weathered camper van parked in the corner, and looking at it makes Sniper weary.

“Why are we here?” he asks Miss Pauling.

“I’m getting something for you,” she says, climbing out the door. “Wait here.”

Sniper waits. It’s an action that’s becoming all too familiar. Miss Pauling’s rummaging around in the sedan’s trunk, and after a moment she walks back up and taps on his window. He squeezes out of the car, and she tilts a large cardboard box in his arms.

“It’s yours,” she says. “I was saving it in case you… ” She trails off.

“Thank you,” Sniper says, taking the box. It is heavy and makes a clanging noise when he moves.

“Take it with you,” she says, and Sniper nods.

He blinks, and when he opens his eyes again she is gone.

 

 

_iii._

There is a man standing in the parking lot, and he is wondering if any of this is even real.

There are keys on the very top of the box, and Sniper wonders if _they’re_ real, or just a mirage created by his mind, but they slot perfectly into the van’s door and turn with a _snick_ , and then Sniper stops wondering what is real or not.

He drives, instead. He tracks down the place where the receipt in his pocket is from, and he finds himself at a small convenience store situated at the edge of town.

He shows the crumpled receipt to the cashier and asks, _Do you know who this is?_

“Uh, maybe?” the cashier says. “I get a lot of customers, dude.” He peers at the receipt, scratching his chin thoughtfully. “I think I remember this guy. Yeah, definitely. It was really late at night, and he paid with cash and told me to keep the change.”

Sniper blinks at him.

“He had some kind of posh accent, too. European, I think.”

“Right,” Sniper says. “Thanks.” As he turns to leave the cashier calls out, “Tell him next time you see him that Gabe owes him!” and then Sniper is gone.

 

 

 _iv._  

He drives the van for miles, drives until the tires wear out, and after that he takes a bus and two trains, north, east, anywhere, and the taste of dust never leaves his mouth.

He opens the cardboard box in a run-down motel in Virginia, and in it he finds a gun, a rusted knife, a pair of yellow-tinted sunglasses, a single black glove, and half a torn envelope.

He holds up the envelope to the light, and in the very corner, handwritten in blue ink, it says:

_Find me._

He turns the envelope over, and on the back under the flap there’s even smaller writing, and it just says: _Please_.

He stares at the writing, the delicate, looping lines, and he wonders what it means, wonders if the message is for him.

He finds a notepad and writes with stiff fingers, _find me find me find me find me find me_ over and over and over again, and then _please please please please please_ until his hand cramps and he runs out of ink, until he is certain that his handwriting doesn’t match the writing on the envelope.

He drops the envelope and stares at himself in the mirror, traces the scar on his face against his cheek and nose and ear, and wonders how he got it.

He wonders why the bullet in his pocket fits so perfectly into the groove of his forefinger and thumb, and he wonders why he even bothers wondering anything anymore.

 

 

 _v._  

In Massachusetts there’s a woman wearing a blue dress who is waiting for him in a diner, and the second he walks in she asks him who he is looking for.

“Who are you?” Sniper asks, and she smiles at him over the rim of her coffee cup.

“Not the person you’re looking for,” she says, “but I can help you find him.”

“ _Who?_ ” he says, desperation leaking into his voice, but she just flashes her white teeth and leans in close, whispers in his ear: _Don’t miss your flight, darling,_ and then she is gone.

There’s a one-way ticket to Stuttgart, Germany lying on the table.

 

 

 _vi._  

It is crowded in Stuttgart, and when Sniper blinks, the masses of people change into something else, other people, disappear, reappear, in different places, different clothes.

Sometimes fragments come to him at night, pieces of recognition drifting on the edge of his consciousness, and one day when he says out loud, “ _I am searching for a man, someone I knew_ ,” it feels like a hard-won truth.

But there is nothing waiting for him in Germany, so he moves on.

He wakes up in Amsterdam, in Rome, in London, Vienna, and Prague, and wisps of memories return to him like lost birds.

There was a war. In his dreams he remembers pushing a bomb, remembers sleeping in a van, body heat, and waking up tangled in someone else’s limbs. He remembers breathing in secondhand smoke, drinking wine under the starlight, falling asleep while staring into eyes the color of cloudy skies.

 _I am searching for a man, someone I loved,_ he thinks, and no matter where he goes the coffee is never strong enough.

He has a name and a bullet in his pocket, and not much else.

(There are few things crueler than leading a desperate man on a wild goose chase.)

 

 

_vii._

There is someone waiting for him in Paris, and the moment their eyes meet Sniper knows, deep in his bones, that his journey is finally over.

He reaches out with both hands to touch Spy, needing proof that he is solid and real, that this is really, really happening.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he rasps, and the planes of Spy’s face are familiar under his hands.

“I thought you were dead, you bastard,” Spy says, and there are tears in his grey eyes but he’s smiling. Sniper drags him forward, closes his eyes, and kisses him.

He tastes like everything but dust.

 

 

_viii._

There is a man lying in Paris, and when he wakes up, he is not alone. He is whole and alive and so, so in love, and even though he may not have all his memories, there is absolutely nothing missing.

 

**Author's Note:**

> -the Sniper/Spy update was released on May 21.  
> -i'll write GabeN into every fic and see how long it takes for people to notice  
> -thank you for reading!


End file.
